Genna on gentrification

This is an abbreviated version of a post I just wrote for my other blog, Fledgling. Here in Brooklyn there’s a great exhibit that just opened at MoCADA; it’s called The Pink Elephant, and local artists were asked to produce art that in some way addresses the process/problem of gentrification. My friends and I talk about gentrification all the time, and I realized that even Genna thinks about it sometimes:

I’ve spent my whole life here in New York. But in this city, people are separate. Blacks and Latinos mix sometimes, but Asians mostly keep to themselves. Whites might live near us, but they don’t live with us. At least that’s how things used to be. When I took the train, most of the white people used to get off before me. But these days more and more of them are staying on the train. Mama says they’re pushing deeper and deeper into Brooklyn. So far no white people have come to live in our neighborhood. Mama says that’s the only good thing about living in such a crappy building. White folks are too scared to move in.